Today is Engineers day in India, celebrated in order to honour the marvellous contributions from M Visvesvaraya Sir.
I wanna share what I think about engineering, after watching countless engineering memes, after facing the stereotypes and after graduating with an engineering degree with ~1M others.
I wanted to do something in the field of computer science after watching a Bill Gates documentary on Nat Geo. Money was the motivation for the 12-year-old Deepak, but he quickly realized, getting motivated because of that won't help me stay focused on this goal, once I find an easier way to make money, I'll probably shift to that goal and end up hopping from one goal to another. I made up my mind and decided to take Computer Science and Engineering like 800k other Indians. I didn't put much effort to get into a college, privilege kicked in. I saw a lot of relatable Engineering memes on the Internet before even joining the college, there are loads of stereotypes and way too many people have a preconceived idea about how we live. Almost all of it is true, but at the same time, it is also false for a lot of them. For an average teen on the internet, Engineering went from, making and building stuff to living a hostel life and enjoying with friends, alongside bragging about stuff like "hey bro I failed all my exams hahaha". Things took a sharp turn.
I personally am still in love with the idea of engineering, there are so many things around us, in our homes, laptops, appliances, electrical circuits, walls, buildings, lights, mobiles etc. All of them were developed by someone who was hungry enough to innovate and architect and engineer things. Those are all really big examples tho, let's take smaller ones, Diwali lights, mobile applications, UPI drones, Bluetooth, stuff that make living convenient, I don't want to list things that engineers made to make our life easy, but to tell how the profession has lost meaning in recent times. There are lakhs of admission each year, half of them actually want to pursue, a quarter of them work hard in the high school and get a seat in top college, some of them come from a wealthy background to get a seat in top private univ's. Then comes the students where the real fight happens. the Tier 2,3 4 college students, the worst part is not getting a good mentor, there are times when even the seniors aren't places who come and give life lessons. Finding a good mentor in those colleges is the first task, then getting a roadmap, youtube is free for everyone, but the educational content is stacked below 20 music videos, vines and sketches. hence getting distracted is really easy. I was in the same case, I am nowhere close to the engineer that I want to be, I wasn't even happy after getting a degree, but the last 1 year has been good, learning wise, I feel I am on a decent path to become a good engineer, but not sure, would need someone to help me. Things seem to come full circle, people question whether college degrees are worth it or not, because building stuff matters.
But on the other side, one can be remembered widely for building stuff, but the person close to him/her, the friends, the communities are all built during college, treating college as a place to just learn won't yield the best results, but instead thinking of it as a place to collaborate and meet people would really benefit one in the long run, I feel degrees are nice, an engineering degree is the best, but no for the memes that are made, but for what it actually means, to be an engineer, to be a problem solver, to be someone who dreams about solutions, the essence seems lost in most of the graduates nowadays, I can say that because I was the same, I took the degree for granted, but a late realization is not that bad.
so yea, while you're reading this, I'm probably thinking about how to make my code run a few milliseconds faster, which is something that will make my day.